Wednesday, June 25, 2008

Henry James once said, "Plot is characters under stress." Journalist Jean-Dominique Bauby, the central character of the film, is under excruciating stress. The movie begins as he awakes from a coma to find himself paralyzed from head to toe.

From Wikipedia: "The film is initially told entirely from the restricted point of view of Bauby, as he wakes from his three-week coma in a hospital in Berck, France. A neurologist explains that he has locked-in syndrome, an extremely rare condition in which the patient is almost completely physically paralyzed, but remains mentally normal. The viewer hears the thoughts of Bauby, which are unattainable to the other characters, and sees through his one functioning eye.

"A speech therapist and physical therapist try to help Bauby become as functional as possible. Bauby cannot speak, but he develops a system of communication with his speech therapist by blinking his left eye as she reads a list of letters to spell out his messages, letter by letter."

Blinking his left eye, a letter at a time, Bauby wrote the book the movie is based upon over the next--and last--year of his life. I hope to read it soon.

Last post--2 months ago--was about traveler's diarrhea. Looks like my friend was right. The best solution was to drink *lots* of clean water and wait for the body to acclimate.

After 10 days of misery, my body built the necessary immunities and the diarrhea abruptly ceased. I was almost ready to go the oral antibiotics route, but was dissuaded by the possibility of wiping out all the beneficial bacteria in the gut, along with the single offending bacteria.

I also maintained a daily regimen yogurt (a pro-biotic food), avoided anything that could have been washed in local water and took supplemental fiber each AM.